My dissertation traces the composition, revision, distribution, and reception of Thomas Jefferson's book Notes on the State of Virginia. During the process of revising his work in the 1780s, Jefferson came to believe that it could have an antislavery influence on future leaders of Virginia, particularly those studying at the College of William and Mary. Moving beyond debates over the nature of Jefferson's own commitment to emancipation, I examine the ways in which those students, and several other young men who studied with Jefferson himself, came to interpret and appropriate the Notes for their own political and antislavery goals during the first decades of the nineteenth century.